time, a maniac scattering dust
by TolkienGirl
Summary: "I am" is so much easier to explain than "I am not." [Tony Stark, through the years, and Tennyson's Ulysses] [Infinity War spoilers]


**A/N: From a Tumblr prompt.**

 _It little profits that an idle king,  
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,  
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole  
Unequal laws unto a savage race, _

"I'm not giving a eulogy."

He can't even see, tells himself it's alcohol and not tears. Tells himself he hasn't cried since the news came.

Obadiah's hand settles on his shoulder, heavy and too warm. Obadiah had assured him it would be closed casket.

As if you could hide things from a Stark.

"You don't have to say a word, boy. I'll handle all that."

It's meant to be comforting, and if it disappoints Aunt Peggy, Tony doesn't give a damn.

Peggy is staring down Obadiah as if she doesn't trust him. They've never gotten along. Tony has never wanted to pick sides. Always just chalked it up to personality. Now, there's a sharper-edged suggestion sliding into the periphery: Peggy Carter couldn't fix Howard Stark herself, and hated to see anyone else trying.

 _If it wasn't the war_ , Tony asked her once, _what was it?_

 _You can only take so many losses_ , she had said, sighing. _Your father kept fighting, and fighting, and I don't believe he's ever stopped. But that means some things get left behind, Tony. He does love you. I need you to know that._

She echoes that now, when Obadiah moves away to greet an old veteran in a bowler hat.

"Your parents loved you very, very much." The lines around Peggy's eyes are deeper than the last time he saw her. "And they were right to."

And Tony loved them too. His mother, simply, and his father, not simply at all. He still has cocaine in his system. Thank God they don't do drug tests at funerals.

"Give the goddamn eulogy yourself, Aunt Peggy," he says, with a slur that _must_ be alcohol, not tears, and walks away with his eyes open.

If he closes his eyes, he'll see what he saw when he opened the caskets.

Can't hide things from a Stark.

 _That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.  
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink  
Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy'd _

Tony loves a redhead.

Virginia Potts is quite possibly the best one he's ever seen.

"Miss Potts—Virginia, if I may—"

She has been prim and quiet and straitlaced this entire interview, ankles crossed gracefully in navy-blue kitten heels. She clears her throat, and says,

"I prefer Pepper."

And Tony is an idiot, he really, really is—

But he's the wisest man in the world for that moment, because he doesn't let himself laugh.

He calls her Miss Potts for a while, likes the way he can slip his tongue around the formality and make it into a flirtation. And then one day he's had too many shots and too many models, and passes out in a pool of vomit, face-down.

Never let it be said that Tony Stark can't hold his alcohol—at least not publicly. Damn it all, he needs a better PR person. This is going to wind up all over _Us Weekly_.

Pepper explains the details of what happened gently. She's got one cool, dry on the back of his neck, the other on his forehead. He keeps puking for a while, and she says, "You're alright now, Tony. You're alright."

It's the first time she hasn't called him Mr. Stark. It's the first time that he's been this close to her, and she smells like lavender.

Tony should have died in that crash in Berlin, if only so that he'd stop screwing up other people's lives.

"You should go," he manages, in between redistributing the contents of his sorry stomach. "You should leave."

Her hand clamps tighter. "No."

"Pepper," he whispers.

She presses soft lips to his damp forehead, and never speaks of it again.

 _Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those  
That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when  
Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades  
Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;_

 _I am Iron Man. I am, I am, I am._

The words of an Old-Testament God whose gaze Tony has eluded for years, if gaze there even is.

 _I am_ is so much easier to explain than _I am not_.

 _For always roaming with a hungry heart  
Much have I seen and known; cities of men  
And manners, climates, councils, governments,  
Myself not least, but honour'd of them all; _

The trouble of his memory—fickle, profound thing that it is—is that certain words ring there forever. He can drink down his father's disappointment or his mother's last words— _"Get some rest"_ —

But Nick Fury found a foothold. _There was an idea…_

 _You think you're the only superhero…_

And he's not. He's not a hero. He has never pretended to be. He has pretended to be happy, and free, and a whole shitload of things that don't belong to him, but those are all things that do not belong to heroes either.

Heroes are sad sacks who don't know when they've been beaten. Tony's just stubborn. It's not the same thing at all.

 _And drunk delight of battle with my peers,  
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.  
I am a part of all that I have met;  
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'  
Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades  
For ever and forever when I move. _

He says "Captain" like it isn't practically the first word he ever knew. As if _Steve Rogers_ wasn't patron saint and holy grail, as if _not a perfect soldier, but a good man_ wasn't emblazoned in golden contrast to the fireworks of Anthony Stark's downward spiral.

Is it any surprise, really, that he hates the man at first sight?

 _Never said I was a team-player_ , he offers up in caustic self-absolution. He'll take down the demigod in horns, first order of priority, all that. But he isn't going to spare a moment's real friendliness for the man who lived in the shadows behind Aunt Peggy's eyes, who was the measure by which Howard Stark spent his life and himself.

You can't hide things from a Stark. Tony saw it all.

 _Big man in a suit of armor. Take that off, what are you?_

Tony manages something quippy, something clever, something that is true enough for now.

And what he thinks, burned white-hot and never golden, is:

 _Not you. Never you._

 _How dull it is to pause, to make an end,  
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!  
As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life  
Were all too little, and of one to me  
Little remains: but every hour is saved  
From that eternal silence, something more,  
A bringer of new things; and vile it were  
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,  
And this gray spirit yearning in desire  
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,  
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought._

All of the foregoing is bullshit. Nothing matters when Earth is growing smaller by the second, when every nerve ending is aflame with one purpose and one purpose only. _We live by different rules_ , Howard always said, and Tony used to spite him with it, used to take it as a blessing to do whatever the hell he wanted.

He knows that isn't what his father meant. By rules, Howard meant duty, and by duty, perhaps he showed why his love didn't always look like love.

Nothing matters. Pepper's voice is gone and the air is growing thinner.

Tony Stark tries his damnedest to die a hero. Only—

He lives.

 _This is my son, mine own Telemachus,  
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,—  
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil  
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild  
A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees  
Subdue them to the useful and the good.  
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere  
Of common duties, decent not to fail  
In offices of tenderness, and pay  
Meet adoration to my household gods,  
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine._

"Cornflakes, huh?"

"You got a problem with that, Capsicle?"

Steve huffs a soft laugh. "No. They're nice, Tony. Familiar."

"Wow, glad to hear I got something right," Tony says. It's not resentful, though it is true that every cereal brand, every acoustically vaulted ceiling, _all_ of it, is tailor-made to the motley band of people he managed to get here.

Never let it be said—publicly—that Tony Stark is desperate for friends.

Steve lifts a bowl from the cupboard, pours himself a bowl. It doesn't have to be a contrived gesture. Super-soldiers get hungry, a lot.

"Thanks," Steve says. He's got a golden smile and it makes Tony think of Peggy and Howard and all that is gone.

He built this place on solid foundations, every inch given purpose and precision, like it's going to last.

 _There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:  
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,  
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me—  
That ever with a frolic welcome took  
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed  
Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old; _

"He was a fraud, dad."

Tony is drunk; he has not been drunk in some time—but also has not been betrayed by Captain America before. Not like this.

Howard says nothing; photographs rarely do. No doubt he is ashamed of both the hearts he gave his son; the one that bleeds and beats no matter the losses, and the one that gleams like a dying star and clinks, metal-cold, beneath a human touch.

"He was a goddamn fraud," he says again. He drains the scotch and hates Steve Rogers because nothing is easy, but that comes closest.

 _Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;  
Death closes all: but something ere the end,  
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,  
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.  
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:  
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep  
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,  
'T is not too late to seek a newer world.  
Push off, and sitting well in order smite  
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds  
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths  
Of all the western stars, until I die. _

Pepper holds the ring in the middle of her hand. It glints accusingly up at its maker. The diamond is Stark-designed. "You thought I'd want a public proposal?"

"I didn't know if you'd want one at all." It's all but a mumble.

Pepper kisses him, long and soft. "I love you."

"Good, glad we're still there." He loops a bright strand of her hair around his fingers.

"I would prefer it not be a press conference." She lifts one brow, and he loves her, he loves her, he has loved too much—

"But we can have one after?" And oh, how does he even _dare_?

"Yes, Tony. Yes." She slips her hand in his. "Now, tell me more about this kid. I'm always interested in people who turn you down."

 _It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:  
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,  
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.  
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'  
We are not now that strength which in old days  
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;  
One equal temper of heroic hearts,  
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will  
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield._

The boy dies in his arms.

The boy dies in his arms, and the only thing he can think is—

Nothing at all. The great mind of Tony Stark is silent as the barrel of a gun when the bullet has burned and flown and ruined. The mind of Tony Stark is empty, because he spent his dreams on children that could never be his, friends that will never be his again, and a boy who might have been both.

Somewhere Berlin ends the same way, and Sokovia ends the same way, and Steve Rogers drops the shield as if it cost him nothing and everything—

Tony Stark is in all of these pasts and these futures, and he does not care, has never cared about _the only way_.

He is not a hero. Heroes have too much hope and never quite enough heart, neither of which will stop them in their tracks when there are too many losses.

If he closes his eyes, there will be no need for open caskets.

(He closes his eyes.)


End file.
